CBI/CIT

[Da Coach]

FWIW, I am hearing there is no desire from administration or the team to play in the CBI or CIT, so little chance it will happen. There will apparently be an official announcement tomorrow PM.

[Chico]

FWIW, I am hearing there is no desire from administration or the team to play in the CBI or CIT, so little chance it will happen. There will apparently be an official announcement tomorrow PM.

IMO Bradley should play in any tournament they get invited to.

[Da Coach]

IMO Bradley should play in any tournament they get invited to.

Did you vote in the poll at the top of the page? They have already heard from the CBI and CIT, but will not be getting NIT or NCAA bids. Unfortunately, our poll carries exactly NO weight.

[Chico]

Did you vote in the poll at the top of the page? They have already heard from the CBI and CIT, but will not be getting NIT or NCAA bids. Unfortunately, our poll carries exactly NO weight.

Yes I did.

[Da Coach]

Marshall, who already accepted an invite to the CIT, may be playing in a different tournament instead. The are playing W. Kentucky in the CUSA championship game tomorrow.

Marshall (RPI 87) pulls off the upset and wins the CUSA Tournament. So they definitely will not be playing in the CIT. That puts another school into the NCAA Tournament that had no chance of an at-large bid, and probably pushes either Middle Tennessee or Western Kentucky, or both into the NIT.

UT-Arlington pulls another big upset, beating Louisiana in the Sun Belt Tournament semifinal. That puts regular season champ Louisiana (RPI 61) to the NIT (the NIT has to take conference regular season champions).

NC Central won the MEAC Tournament. There was a 3-way tie for their regular season title (NC Central was not one of the three), so it looks like they will send 3 teams to the NIT.

There was also an upset in the Southland Conference, which will put SE Louisiana (RPI 150) into the NIT. And there were several other tournament upsets.

It's been a crazy week for conference tournament upsets. It is looking more and more improbable we'll see an MVC team in the NIT.

[MacabreMob]

Marshall (RPI 87) pulls off the upset and wins the CUSA Tournament. So they definitely will not be playing in the CIT. That puts another school into the NCAA Tournament that had no chance of an at-large bid, and probably pushes either Middle Tennessee or Western Kentucky, or both into the NIT.

UT-Arlington pulls another big upset, beating Louisiana in the Sun Belt Tournament. That puts UT-Arlington (RPI 105) into the NCAA Tournament, and pushes Louisiana (RPI 61) to a likely NIT spot.

NC Central won the MEAC Tournament. There was a 3-way tie for their regular season title (NC Central was not one of the three), so it looks like they will send 3 teams to the NIT.

There was also an upset in the Southland Conference, which will put SE Louisiana (RPI 150) into the NIT. And there were several other tournament upsets.

It's been a crazy week for conference tournament upsets. It is looking more and more improbable we'll see an MVC team in the NIT.

I am almost positive the NIT takes the #1 seed in a conference's tournament whenever there is a tie in a conference for 1st place. In this case in the MEAC, Hampton was the #1 see and lost in the final to NC Central. Only Hampton gets an Auto Bid to the NIT.

I also don't believe M Tenn St is gonna get an At-Large to the NCAA so they will be going to the NIT in my opinion.

[MacabreMob]

FWIW, I am hearing there is no desire from administration or the team to play in the CBI or CIT, so little chance it will happen. There will apparently be an official announcement tomorrow PM.

And IMO - Bradley should NOT play in these tournaments especially when opponents are going to be an embarrassment (like Abilene Christian).

[Vent]

If Bradley declines the invitation to play in the CBA or CIT, I applaud them. These tournaments are the same as the much watered down bowl games of college football. Obviously they have a lack of players due to transfers, but I would like to hope it??™s because Dr. Reynolds and Brian Wardell have raised the expectations of the program. In my opinion, it??™s better to take the $40,000 or whatever the entry fee is and use it on improving the quality of the program through player recruitment as opposed to playing another game.

[Da Coach]

FWIW, I am hearing there is no desire from administration or the team to play in the CBI or CIT, so little chance it will happen. There will apparently be an official announcement tomorrow PM.

Looks like our information was pretty accurate.
Bradley announced officially tonight that they will not accept bids to the CBI or CIT.

[tornado]

....kinda hints maybe we are not...else why would someone leave when there are still games to play?

I think it was fairly obvious that the season was over when the announcement came about players leaving

[LittleBrave]

That is a perfectly reasonable opinion if you look at playing in the postseason as only good for some kind of prestigious prize.
But the way I look at those tournaments is the same as I look at an early-season tournament. You wouldn't refuse to play in a tournament like the Islands of the Bahamas tournament or the Gulf Coast Showcase because most of the teams weren't top 25 teams, would you? Those were the November tournaments we played in the last 2 years, and IMO they helped improve and develop our team.
If you look at the CBI or CIT as simply a competitive tournament to give your players a chance to play more games, the team a chance to get more practices, and the fans to watch more games, then I believe it can be justified. Sure, purists will turn their noses up at playing in any tournament other than the NCAA (even the NIT is a losers' tournament and not much better than the CBI or CIT). But the majority of fans at schools like Bradley like them. The biggest reason is the opportunity to benefit your program, and I think they can do that. There are many examples like Loyola where their participation helped improve their teams.

As for the officiating, would you rather have the prima donnas like John Higgins and Gerry Pollard? I don't recall any problems with officials in any of the smaller tournaments we have played in, nor in the CBI or CIT when we played in them.

And if not for Bradley participating in the CBI, we would never have had this-




Another view-

That 74-foot heave at the buzzer still sends chills down my spine.
Great moment!

[tornado]

I got a real giggle out of the Kirk Wessler column about the CBI/CIT...
He viciously attacks those two tourneys as losers' tourneys, altho he inexplicably exempts the NIT completely from that same assessment...

just a few clips..
"..zero reason for BU to splash in either alphabet-soup bowl. Ever.
..paying an entry fee to play postseason ball is absurd
Coaches sometimes try to justify participation ...Balderdash
back at the beginning of these worthless affairs, you could argue they provided a chance to play a marquee opponent...
If you want to roll with the big boys, act like one..."

LOL - back when Geno finished 16-16, those guys were all in favor and acted like playing in the CIT was a tremendous accomplishment and a sign of a truly great season! But then, I fully expected the hypocrisy...

Here's a few clips from the PJS in the 2013 post-season..
"For the first time in four years, the Bradley men??™s basketball team is headed to postseason play...
It is exciting, especially the chance to play at home once again,???
Postseason opportunity is part of the progression and maturation of the program ... a sign of what we trying to build toward, an important step in the process.
..your goal is to play in the postseason..but with only 34 at-large bids, sometimes you??™re playing for the NIT, the CBI or the CIT.
???For our kids to accomplish that ... is a big progression
..the seniors want to play and our younger guys need to look at this as an opportunity. This has gotten us an extra 10 days of practice and that has significant value ..
...Braves are a perfect candidate ... more experience and overachieving squads deserving of a reward.
The CIT..... affordable entry fee
very optimistic about our opportunity to be selected in one of the events.
...our players would be disappointed if that was the last game...It would be nice to get a chance to go tip it up and get some of our younger guys some postseason experience, some
..for us to make a postseason and be the sixth biggest turnaround in the country ...would be more positives our players are deserving of."

[Da Coach]

Kirk and Dave were quite good at putting lipstick on a pig.

In all 4 years of the Geno/MC/JG debacle it seemed like there must have been some ulterior motive that caused the PJ Star to fail to see and report how awful thing were and how much worse they kept getting, and instead they kept piling on the superlatives like Geno was "doing things the right way", "the Braves are better than they were when the season started two months ago. By a light year or two, they??™re better" (that incredible statement was made in the midst of the worst season in Bradley's 109 year history to that point, and in the middle of a stretch where Bradley lost 21 of their last 23 games that 2011-12 season), Geno's 2013 "stellar BU recruiting class" (that 2013 class of freshmen Jordan Swopshire, Xzavier Taylor and Stefan Zecevic, sophomores Anthony Fields and Omari Grier and juniors Auston Barnes and Chris Blake was compared favorably with previous recruiting classes from 1992 & 2004 that lead to MVC Championships and NCAA Sweet 16 runs and had two NBA 1st round picks in them), and the "defining moment" which was proclaimed as such a triumphant moment when a bunch of Chicago players walked into renaissance Coliseum, but nothing positive ever came of it, so in the end it defined nothing but failure, and there are many more such Panglossian observations that were made back then.

[pfcmsh]

LOL

LOL Lipstick on a pig.... that is funnier than heck!!!

All I can comment is that this bias about the previous administration and coach is totally incredulous. Just hard to fathom.

[tornado]

there was the statement that Bradley's frontcourt in 2014 was the best since Mitchell Anderson, Thirdkill & Donald Reese!
...
but all along the fans were smarter - we all saw the caliber of play, the caliber of the overhyped recruits, last minute juco additions and obscure transfers, plus the incredible ineptitude of recruiting & landing kids who were given scholarships just to come here and find out they were not eligible...